Runaway
by Dream Dweller
Summary: Songfic. Mild refrences to prostitution.


_A/N: This was my first ever songfic._

_Disclaimer: I don't own Jareth and Sarah and I'm not quite delusional enough to believe otherwise…yet. The song is _Runaway_ by Bon Jovi. No copyright infringement intended._

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_On the streets where you live  
Girls talk about their social lives  
They're made of lipstick plastic and paint  
A touch of sable in their eyes_

Yeah, all the ones they wanted you to be like. With their bubble wrapped lives, perfection in every curve and perfect, vapid, empty headed boyfriends (mostly blondes with blue or brown eyes but never any with both…). The ones who didn't believe in magic and whispered about you behind your back as if you were some sort of oddity…and maybe you were.

  
_All your life, all your life  
All you've asked is when's your Daddy gonna talk to you  
But you were living in another world  
Tryin' to get a message through  
No one heard a single word you said_

And no one ever had. Dad stopped listening to you after mum was gone. He stopped listening round about the same time he decided to marry Karen and never really started again, and Karen…well, Karen didn't really care did she. She just looked at the bubble gum girls and wished you'd be more like them. So you retreated inside myth and magic and fairytale…never dreaming one day it would come for you. In the flesh, with such dangerous eyes, a wicked smile and tears that never fell…

  
_They should have seen in it your eyes  
What was going round your head_

But they didn't. Nobody noticed you got quieter afterwards. Sure they noticed you spent more time with Toby but the smiles you showed then seemed to hide everything else. The nights you would walk to the park at odd hours just to sit on a bench near the bridge, the way you hardly spoke any more, the excessive time in your room, the way you were never really hungry any more (though you had seemed to acquire an almost obsessive taste for peaches), the slipping grades…

  
_Ooh, she's a little runaway  
Daddy's girl learned fast  
All those things she couldn't say  
Ooh, she's a little runaway_

So that's what you became. No one understood you and not even your dreams would take you back, and it was just so hard trying to conform to the mould and you wanted so badly to get away. You couldn't even walk in the park without thinking about it………_tears that never fell………_

_A different line every night  
Guarenteed to blow your mind  
I see you out on the streets  
Calling for a wild time_

Yes, that's what you do now, and it's not so bad. So many ways to drown a memory. It's just too bad they never stay down. Resilient little buggers they are. They surface latter, but not now. No, now you switch off, focused on the cold of the night and the hardness of the streets and you tell yourself _it's not so bad._

  
_So you sit home alone  
Cause there's nothing left that you can do  
There's only pictures hung in the shadows  
Left there to look at you_

And this is when the memories come again and a million and two what ifs tumble through your head. Things you could have done but didn't, words you shouldn't have said but did, and you know it's too late, you can't change any of it, and so you sit in the dark with tears in your eyes, tears that do not fall.

_You know she likes the lights at night  
On the neon Broadway sign  
She don't really mind  
Its only love she hoped to find_

You did like the lights. At first, but then they got old, like everything else in this town. The sights weren't so appealing anymore and you began to slip in to dreams again. Seeing blonde hair and mismatched eyes in all the men who came to you. Someone to love me, you whispered into the wind and the wind whispers back _someone did._

  
_Ooh, she's a little runaway  
Daddy's girl learned fast  
All those things she couldn't say_

_Ooh, she's a little runaway_

You rub your hands together, trying to warm them and thinking maybe you should have said something more. But then what could you say? _Um………I wished Toby away and I had to complete the Labyrinth in thirteen hours or he'd be a goblin and I did and I haven't been happy since and no I don't think pink is my colour……… _You even think you sound crazy.

_No one heard a single word you said  
They should have seen it in your eyes  
What was going round your head_

Yeah, maybe if they'd noticed you more they'd have known you were going to run, and maybe you wouldn't have. Maybe they did, you think bitterly and not for the first time. After all as far as you know they never tried to find you. Maybe they sighed in relief when they found the note and forgot about you soon after. _Dear, what ever did happen to that girl who used to stay here and watch Toby?_ You laugh, but it's not a happy sound and, not for the first time, you miss them.

  
_Ooh, she's a little runaway  
Daddy's girl learned fast  
All those things she couldn't say  
Ooh, she's a little runaway  
Daddy's girl learned fast  
Now she works the night away_

_Ooh, she's a little runaway  
Daddy's girl learned fast  
All those things she couldn't say  
Ooh, she's a little runaway  
Daddy's girl learned fast  
Now she works the night away ………_

Well it pays the bill and it feeds you and it's better than being in at night, wishing. At least out here you can pretend and after a while it didn't even hurt any more. You stopped blushing, just got on with it like a rag doll. They had their fantasies and you had your own. _I wish………I wish………I wish………_

A black limo stops near by and from a half rolled window a pale hand beckons. With barley a pause or a flicker of any kind of feeling you leave your place in the shadows and walk towards it. The window moves silently down and mismatched eyes burn into yours. _Such a pity……… _his voice catches slightly and there are tears in his eyes. The door swings opened and his blonde hair glimmers as it catches the light of the sodium lamps that light the streets. You climb inside without a word and his arms are warm and strong. For the first time in a long time you cry, sobbing against his chest and he kisses your tears away, rocking you like a child. At some point the car will become a carriage and the world will change, though neither of you will notice when. The castle is just as you remember it and as he lifts you out you think _home._


End file.
